Ash Kalra on pensions: Time for San Jose to end the war on its employees

In December, San Jose City Council was on the verge of doling out another $1 million to a law firm for litigation over Measure B, the pension modification measure voters passed last June. There was a rare moment of perspective as the city attorney noted that the legally risky measure had led to an "all-out war" with city employees.

As we enter the last weeks of the annual budget process, and as we struggle to find funds to stem the tide of crime, blight and reduced services, the council will be asked Tuesday, for the second time in five months, to fork over nearly another million dollars to continue battling our own employees.

Ash Kalra speaks against Measure B, the city's pension reform measure, at a San Jose Rotary Club event in April 2012.
(Karen T. Borchers)

Measure B has eroded employee morale and created the most toxic labor-management relationship in the city's history. The aggression with which the city approached the fiscal situation was a well-crafted political strategy to all but guarantee a pension measure that would hail the mayor as politically victorious without yielding real savings other cities have achieved through collaborative reform.

That this strategy was chosen over a pragmatic, solution-oriented approach was not the fault of residents or employees, yet they have suffered the most. We are seeing services to residents at dangerously low levels. Good employees, most noticeably police, are leaving in droves.

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This is particularly frustrating when we're being asked to pay another million dollars to the law firm that advised us to proceed with the pension measure and which is now benefiting from its own advice. These funds could be used to restore services if we had reached a collaborative solution.

There are three things we can do right now to be fiscally prudent while restoring services:

1. Stop the litigation over pension reform. We cannot wage war against our employees, expect them to provide high-quality service for lower pay and then be surprised that they seek employment elsewhere. Given the decades of case law against the city's attempt to break our employees' contract terms, we continue to face an uphill battle without significant savings. We should follow the direction of other California cities and negotiate pension reform to create real, immediate savings.

2. Make services to residents a priority. In recent years, the council has rejected proposals from me and others, including one to reinstate the police burglary unit and another to expand library hours, because we were not certain we'd have the funds beyond the next fiscal year. But if recent years have taught us anything, it's that there is never a guarantee that ongoing funds will materialize. I'd rather commit to enhancing services and then work to identify funding.

San Jose's austerity plan has elevated crime and reduced services to unacceptable levels. During this budget cycle, I'd like to expand library hours, restore the burglary unit and fund neighborhood traffic safety projects.

3. Ensure that employees will be made whole as we exit the recession. San Jose is seeing record job growth, and tax revenue is beating expectations every quarter. City employees gave up 10 percent of their pay, plus more in pension and health benefits. I know we cannot restore all of that in the next year or even two. But the city should state clearly that the goal is to do so. That would show that it understands the sacrifice employees made.

I know how unlikely it is that city leadership will forgo the self-destructive path of litigation. But in this particular war, where the opponents are the very men and women we rely upon to keep this city running, there can be no winner. We all lose.

Ash Kalra represents District 2 on the San Jose City Council. He wrote this for this newspaper.